This invention relates to decorative devices containing a plurity of mutually immiscible liquids for displaying colored patterns.
Rainbows, parts of rainbows, and rainbow-like designs are very popular in many parts of the world as decorative components in visual displays. Many devices have been described for producing rainbow-like effects or incorporating the colors of the rainbow in designs. Such designs and effects have invaribly been created either with solid materials or by shining colored lights on appropriate surfaces. Novel and interesting devices are always in demand for toys, novelties, and art objects.
Liquids can make interesting color effects because liquid movement creates many possibilities solid materials do not have. A rainbow design formed from a plurality of colored liquids would have many advantages in a decorative device. However, there has hitherto been no known way of creating a liquid rainbow wherein all the colors can interact and mix yet separate into a rainbow again on standing. A true rainbow effect would have at least five colors more or less resembling the colors red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet, and would have them in proper order with each color segregated from the others in its own band of color. In a liquid rainbow, the bands and colors would change when the liquids were moved and be reconstituted when the device was again at rest in its original position.
If five liquids are all confined in the same container and they are required to separate into five layers after mixing, the only known liquid systems which would do so are one wherein it is not possible to dye each layer a separate brilliant desired color. The systems which come closest to making five-component liquid rainbows are descrived in U.S. Pat. No. 4,085,533 and in my copending application Ser. No. 105,967, now abandoned. Both disclose systems of five immiscible liquid phases, some of which can be colored. In each case, however, at least one fluorocarbon layer is included. Fluorocarbons cannot in general be dyed, at least not by the common method of dissolving therein a commercial dye which has much lower solubility in all the other layers. Thus it is not presently feasible to make a liquid rainbow by confining five colored liquids in the same container.
In each liquid were confined in its own separate container, the attraction of liquidity would be lost, since the liquids could no longer form the attractive patterns and designs characteristic of liquid phases in contact with each other, as described in my copending application Ser. No, 105,966, now abandoned.
No other approaches to liquid rainbows were heretofore known.
A device is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,057,921 which, like the preferred embodiment of the present invention, comprises two transparent, sheet-like chambers fixed face to face, each containing a plurality of mutally immiscible liquids. However, all the embodiments and examples in that patent display when at rest only two colors. A two-color device, or even a three-color device, is clearly far removed from a liquid rainbow.
One object of the present invention is to provide a display device wherein at rest five colors of the rainbow appear in colored bands, while upon inversion or edformation yet other colors, shapes, and patterns become evident in a kinetic display.
Another object is to provide a liquid rainbow toy wherein no matter how thoroughly the liquids are mixed, they always separate back into a rainbow on standing.
Another object is to provide an object of art which can produce novel and fascinating colored patterns and movements.
Other objects and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the following description.